LAHORE: The Federal Investigation Agency believes Punjab has been infested with grey traffickers, causing huge financial loss to the national exchequer.

The FIA along with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has so far unearthed some 50 illegal exchanges in the province in their ongoing crackdown on grey traffickers launched a few months ago.

“During the crackdown on grey traffickers we have come to know that the province is infested with grey traffickers. We have unearthed 50 or so illegal gateway exchanges in different parts of the province, thus causing huge financial loss to the exchequer,” FIA Lahore (region) Director Dr Usman Anwer told Dawn here on Monday.

He said still there was a need to intensify crackdown on the grey traffickers to get rid of the menace.

To a question about how deep rooted this problem is, Dr Anwar said: “Still more than 90 per cent grey traffickers have been operating in the province and we have to catch them in shortest possible time.”

Grey traffic is defined as the use of illegal exchanges for making international calls, bypassing the legal routes and exchanges. These illegal exchanges include VOIP (Voice-Over Internet Protocol) that uses a computer; GSM (Global System for Mobile) gateways; WLL (Wireless Local Loop) phones or mobile SIMS.

The grey traffickers have been causing millions of dollars of loss to the national exchequer monthly by routing incoming calls from abroad especially the Gulf region.

The International Clearing House (ICH) exchange had reportedly provided latest equipment to the PTA to check the grey traffic. The government had disbanded the ICH last year but it got a stay order from the court against the decision.

The five cellular mobile operators have also been asked to set up “grey monitoring desk” to help the authorities concerned to identify SIMs being used for routing the calls.

Telecom sector expert Sohaib Sheikh told this reporter that the sole purpose for the establishment of ICH was elimination of grey traffic. But this could not happen.

“The increase in illegal international incoming traffic is due to increased incentive for grey traffickers,” he said, adding the authorities concerned had promised deployment of monitoring system for complete elimination of grey traffic but it appeared to be a distant dream.

“Had the authority concerned installed $30 million equipment, it might have blocked every single connection involved in grey telephony,” Mr Sheikh said.

The FIA has been registering cases against grey traffickers under sections 36 and 37 of Electronic Transaction Ordinance and 109 of Pakistan Penal Code. An accused faces maximum up to seven years imprisonment under these charges.

Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2014